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Abstract:
Europe's economic crisis has been transformed into a crisis of democratic governance that could roll back five decades of integration. The European Union may disintegrate because its "commanders" are unable to converge three distinct economic, political and institutional theatres in which the crisis is being played out. The EU lacks sound democratic means to legitimate the policies necessary for trans-border financial transfers and budgetary discipline. The key European actor, Germany, has adopted policies that fail to ease pressure from the markets and have stimulated political opposition against the German "dictate." As a result Germany is less committed to saving the European project.

This article examines British policymakers' attempts to address the political and practical problems of crowd control in British Africa. After the Accra riots, reforming the policing of crowds became an imperial priority. These efforts pushed in several policy directions, yet none could solve the deeper political issues causing the unrest, nor stop state violence against civilians. During the 1950s, the distance between the liberal rhetoric in Britain about the rule of law and the brutal realities of colonial policing continued to grow. This gap was finally exposed during the Nyasaland Emergency, which had dramatic consequences for the future of British Africa.

A major debate in the literature on the political economy of development centers on the relationship between regime type and economic development. This debate has been heavily influenced by the East Asian development model, where authoritarianism has often gone hand in hand with high growth rates. In South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, development has been propelled by authoritarian or semidemocratic regimes. One key element of this argument is that the repression of labor under these authoritarian regimes has been especially helpful in states' pursuit of high growth rates because it has ensured political stability and checked societal demands.

AbstractThis study focuses on the first gated communities in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which were developed between 1951 and 1964. In an era of democracy and economic growth, the Brazilian government promoted infrastructural improvements and attracted foreign capital. However, there was a concomitant increase in inequality and poverty, and deep-rooted political conflicts. Notwithstanding the varying motivations of those who chose to live in gated communities, this article argues that the attempt by elites to establish a lifestyle of leisure and European-style sophistication in these enclaves had political, ethnic, class and gender implications. Their self-segregation strengthened the patrimonialism and authoritarianism in politics that would prevail during the ensuing military dictatorship.

In The Tragic Vision of Politics (Lebow, 2003), Richard Ned Lebow argues that a 'tragic understanding of the political' provides the best ontological and epistemological foundations for a theory of International Relations. This article challenges that claim. It argues that other literary modes of representing social life can offer equally strong bases for international theories. To that end, it examines the 'satirical vision of politics' with reference to satirists as diverse as Aristophanes and Erasmus. It concludes that satire can provide just as good a form of political education as tragedy and just as robust a foundation for the kind of theory Lebow prefers.

British negotiating tactics at the European Council of December 2011 were the predictable outcome of the underlying approach to the EU of the present British government and particularly of its largest component, the Conservative Party. Recent years have seen a consolidation of hostility in the UK towards the EU, both at the public and the political level. A referendum on British membership is in the medium term a real possibility, with no certainty as to its outcome. British attitudes towards the EU may change over time in a more favourable direction. Any such change will require concerted political action and leadership, which have hitherto been lacking.

In dynamic collective decision making, current decisions determine the future distribution of political power and influence future decisions. We develop a general framework to study this class of problems. Under acyclicity, we characterize dynamically stable states as functions of the initial state and obtain two general insights. First, a social arrangement is made stable by the instability of alternative arrangements that are preferred by sufficiently powerful groups. Second, efficiency-enhancing changes may be resisted because of further changes they will engender. We use this framework to analyze dynamics of political rights in a society with different types of extremist views. (JEL D71, D72, K10)

ABSTRACTIn response to the call for more investigation on 'institutional dynamism', this article examines the role of power and accidents in causing institutional changes, employing the theoretical perspective of historical institutionalism. The impact of two 'accidents' (epidemics) on the institutional setting of a hospital in Hong Kong under different power contexts (changes of political sovereignty) is analysed as a case study. The finding is that power matters more than accidents. This is not to deny the importance of accidents. Accidents matter because they produce windows of opportunity for institutional changes to take place. Through political manoeuvres powerful actors may decide which accidents should cause change.

The existence and the effective utilization of opportunity structures by the Gagauz and Pridnestrovian elites between 1989 and 1991 enabled them to successfully mobilize wide parts of the population, take control of the administration and build parallel state structures out of the control of both Chişinău and Moscow. The Pridnestrovian elites were more successful in the effective utilization of such opportunity structures than their Gagauz counterparts. Access to vast economic and political resources, political unity, and strong organizational skills combined with a creative interpretation of the right to self-determination enabled the former to pursue their secession policy with greater efficiency.

AbstractThis article discusses British civil liberties organisations hoping to engage in a broader human rights politics during and immediately after the Second World War. It argues that various movements and organisations from sections of the British Left attempted to articulate a human rights politics which incorporated political, civil, social and economic rights during the 1940s and early 1950s. However, organisations were unable to express this and mobilise accordingly. This reflected the collapse of the popular-front-style alliances forged in the 1930s and the difficulties in articulating political positions distinct from the ideological polarisation that emerged with the onset of the Cold War.

AbstractSocial group conflict along regional, ethnic, linguistic, and religious cleavages is deeply embedded in the Canadian historical experience. Contemporary analyses, however, have deprecated the role of religion and religiosity in shaping Canadians' political attitudes. This analysis demonstrates that religion and religiosity are significant correlates of Canadian attitudes on moral issues, paralleling the pattern observed in the United States. It demonstrates that the religious cleavage has been a salient feature of Canadian politics for some time and considers whether the contemporary moral divide could serve as a portent of cultural-religious conflict in Canada if a "political entrepreneur" articulated an issue agenda linked to these religion-based differences.

ABSTRACT Using a case study from Ethiopia, this article examines the ways in which climate information and economic development interact in climate adaptation programmes. Microinsurance programmes have become very popular as an adaptation strategy but there has been little attention paid to the social, economic and political aspects of implementation. Examining one case in relation to the broader literature on climate adaptation projects suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to existing coping strategies, introduction of additional market risks, local capacity building and the socio‐political context of implementation. Climate change cannot be viewed as a technical problem only; it has a social dimension as well.

Narrative stories offer insight into political agency and constructed reality. They are also part of the armoury for maintaining political ascendancy. The UK Cameron–Clegg Coalition government's public service reform narrative juxtaposed its open, transparent and decentralized approach with the top-down configuration of institutional power attributed to New Labour. The more complex reality of public service reform is exemplified particularly from the criminal justice arena. From a structuralist perspective, the Coalition's reform trajectory has been related to emergent realities of networked governance. But here too more ambiguous influences were at work with reform again proving more problematic than anticipated.

Spanish bureaucracy is often said to be marked by poor coordination, poor information and inability to shape political agendas - but analyses of Spanish EU policy regularly present a list of its achievements. We focus on the 'policy bureaucracy' that monitors and acts on dossiers regardless
of their political priority, using one EU policy area: health care services policy. For almost the entire EU health care debate, Spain was uncoordinated and invested little in formulating its interests or shaping agendas. Spain's policy bureaucracy fits a country that wins amendments at late
stages, but does not engage early to shape policy outside its key priorities.

This paper extends the model of Spolaore (2004) about adjustments in di erent government systems for the context of scal adjustments and sovereign default. We introduce asymmetry between groups in income and preferences towards scal reforms. Default a ects di erently each group and becomes a possibility if reforms are not enacted after public nance solvency shocks, in uencing the political game according to its likelihood. With the extensions, new situations which were not possible with the previous framework arise. After the exposition of the model, the Argentine default in 2001 provides an example of the political con icts addressed by the model.